If you’ve been hearing about countries like South Africa and Kenya or the African continent in general as an “untapped market,” it’s because a lot of people have been saying it.
Delta Air Lines (DAL) announced that it was bringing back its routes to Lagos from New York and Atlanta in the coming winter while United Airlines (UAL) followed with a range of new flights to Ghana and South Africa. United’s Director of Sales for Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Israel Thorsten Lettnin recently said that Cape Town had “stable demand throughout the entire year” and thereby “potentially further growth opportunities.”
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Airplane manufacturing giant Airbus (EADSF) just echoed the growing industry interest in the continent.
‘One of the biggest markets in Africa with untapped potential’
“One of the biggest markets in Africa with the biggest untapped potential is Nigeria,” Airbus Airline Marketing Director Joep Ellers told aviation website Simple Flying at the IATA Wings of Change Focus Africa conference in Johannesburg. “It is the most populous country and has one of the highest GDP, depending on who you talk to, so there is definitely a huge demand in Nigeria.”
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At the end of 2023, Airbus also released a global market forecast report for Africa showing that different Nigerian airlines are expected to order at least 160 new passenger and cargo planes from Airbus between now and 2042 while different African airlines will require 1,180 planes during the same time period.
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‘The main business of African carriers is on the African continent’
With demand for flights between nearby African cities particularly high, single-aisle planes are being ordered more than widebodies. The need is highest for the A220 and the A321neo.
“The main business of African carriers is on the African continent,” Ellers said further. “If you take all the intercontinental flights coming into Africa, more than 80% of those flights are operated by non-African carriers. Therefore, we see that in our forecast, where three-quarters of the demand is focused on single-aisles and one-quarter on widebodies.”
Both within and outside of Africa, travel numbers are ramping up at unprecedented speeds. In April 2024, Oslo-based Norse Atlantic Airways (NRSAF) announced a surprising new route between London and Cape Town at budget-airline prices. Norse founder and chief executive Bjorn Tore Larsen also said the route tries to “break the duopoly” of having to pick between British Airways and South African Airways to fly between those cities.
In its annual Travel Check-In: Summer 2024 report, flight aggregation platform Kayak also identified Africa as the “#1 trending region for summer.” Searches for flights to the continent from North America are up 6% from the same period a year ago while countries such as Ghana and Kenya are seeing even higher numbers due to having the strongest tourism industries (the report looked at North African countries like Morocco and Tunisia separately.)
Airlines have also been paying close attention to these trends and setting their sights on metropolises most likely to see a steady stream of travelers in the years to come.
“Overall, we’re seeing more increases in searches to African destinations than last year,” reads the report.
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